PRO. Not fo, sweet lady; but too mean a fervant
To have a look of fuch a worthy mistress.
VAL. Leave off discourse of disability :-
Sweet lady, entertain him for your servant.
PRO. My duty will I boast of, nothing elfe.
SIL. And duty never yet did want his meed:
Servant, you are welcome to a worthless mistress.
PRO. I'll die on him that says so, but yourself.
SIL. That you are welcome?

PRO.

No; that you are worthlefs.s

1

Enter Servant.

SER. Madam, my lord your father would fpeak with you.

SIL. I'll wait upon his pleasure. ( Exit Servant.

Come, Sir Thurio,

Go with me:-Once more, new servant, welcome:
I'll leave you to confer of home-affairs;

When you have done, we look to hear from you.

8 No; that you are worthless. ) I have inferted the particle no, to fill up the measure. JOHNSON.

Perhaps the particle supplied is unnecessary. Worthless was, I believe, ufed as a trifyllable. See Mr. Tyrwhitts' note, p. 191.

MALONE.

Is worthless a trifyllable in the preceding speech of Silvia? Is there any instance of the licence recommended, respeding the adje&ive worthless, to be found in Shakspeare, or any other writer? STEEVENS.

9 Ser. Madam, my lord your father) This speech in all the editions is affigned improperly to Thurio; but he has been all along upon the flage, and could not know that the duke wanted his daughter. Besides, the first line and half of Silvia's anfwer is evidently addressed to two perfons. A fervant, therefore, must come in and deliver the message; and then Silvia goes out with

Thurio. THEOBALD.

1

PRO. We'll both attend upon your ladyship.
[Exit SILVIA, THURIO, and SPEED.

VAL. Now, tell me, how do all from whence you
came?

PRO. Your friends are well, and have them much

commended.

VAL. And how do yours?
PRO.

I left them all in health.
VAL. How does your lady? and how thrives your

love?

PRO. My tales of love were wont to weary you; I know, you joy not in love-difcourse.

VAL. Ay, Proteus, but that life is alter'd now: 'I have done penance for contemning love; Whose high imperious thoughts have punished me With bitter fafts, with penitential groans With nightly tears, and daily heart-fore fighs; For, in revenge of my contempt of love, Love hath chac'd fleep from my enthralled eyes, And made them watchers of mine own heart's forrow, O, gentle Proteus, love's a mighty lord; And hath fo humbled me, as, I confefs, There is no woe to his correction,

3

I have

2 Whofe high imperious | For whose I read those. contemned love and am punished. Those high thoughts, by which I exalted myself above human passions or frailties, have brought upon me fafts and groans. JOHNSON.

I believe the old copy is right. Imperious is an epithet very frequently applied to love by Shakspeare and his contemporaries. So, in The Famous History of George Lord Faukonbridge, 4to. 1616. p. 15: "Such an imperious God is love, and fo commanding." A few lines lower Valentine observes that "love's a mighty lord."

3

MALONE.

no woe to his correction, No mifery that can be compared to the punishment inflicted by love. Herbert called for the prayers of the liturgy a little before his death, faying, None to them, none to them. JOHNSON.

Nor, to his service, no such joy on earth!
Now, no difcourse, except it be of love;
Now can I break my fatt, dine, fup, and sleep,
Upon the very naked name of love.

PRO. Enough; I read your fortune in your eye: Was this the idol that you worship fo?

VAL. Even she; and is she not a heavenly saint?
PRO. No; but she is an earthly paragon.

VAL. Call her divine.

PRO.

I will not flatter her.

VAL. O, flatter me; for love delights in praises.

PRO. When I was fick, you gave me bitter pills;

And I must minister the like to you.

VAL. Then speak the truth by her; if not divine, Yet let her be a principality,1 Sovereign to all the creatures on the earth.

PRO. Except my mistress.

VAL.

Sweet, except not any;

Except thou wilt except against my love.

PRO. Have I not reason to prefer mine own?

VAL. And I will help thee to prefer her too:

The fame idiom occurs in an old ballad quoted in Cupid's Whirligig, 1616:

4

"There is no comfort in the world

"To women that are kind." MALONE.

a principality,) The funt or principal of women. So the old writers use ftate, "She is a lady, a great ftate." Latymer. "This look is called in states warlie, in others otherwise." Sir T.

More. JOHNSON.

There is a fimilar fense of this word in St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans viii. 38.- nor angels nor principalities."

Mr. M. Mafon thus judiciously paraphrafes the sentiment of Valentine. "If you will not acknowledge her as divine, let her at least be confidered as an angel of the frit order, superior to every thing on earth." STEEVENS.

She shall be dignified with this high honour, -
To bear my lady's train; left the base earth
Should from her vesture chance to steal a kifs,
And, of fo great a favour growing proud,
Difdain to root the fummer-fwelling flower,'
And make rough winter everlastingly.

PRO. Why, Valentine, what braggardism is this?
VAL. Pardon me, Proteus; all I can is nothing
To her, whose worth makes other worthies nothing;
She is alone. 6

PRO. Then let her alone.

VAL. Not for the world: why, man, she is mine

own;

And I as rich in having such a jewel,
As twenty feas, if all their fand were pearl,
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.
Forgive me, that I do not dream on thee,
Because thou seest me dote upon my love.
My foolish rival, that her father likes,
Only for his poffeffions are so huge,
Is gone with her along; and I must after,
For love, thou know'st, is full of jealoufy.
PRO. But she loves you?

--fummer-swelling flower, I once thought that our poet had written fummer-smelling; but the epithet which stands in the text I have fince met with in the tranflation of Lucan, by Sir Arthur Gorges, 1614, B. VIII. p. 354:

--no Roman chieftaine should
"Come near to Nyle's Pelufian mould,

" But fhun that fummer-fwelling shore."

The original is, " - ripafque æftate tumentes," 1. 829. May likewise renders it fummer-fwelled bauks. The fummer-fwelling flower is the flower which swells in fummer, till it expands itself into bloom. STEEVENS.

6 She is alone.) She stands by herself. There is none to he compared to her. JOHNSON.

1

:

:

VAL.

Ay, and we are betroth'd;

Nay, more, our marriage hour,
With all the cunning manner of our flight,
Determin'd of: how I must climb her window;
The ladder made of cords; and all the means
Plotted; and 'greed on, for my happiness.
Good Proteus, go with me to my chamber,
In these affairs to aid me with thy counsel.

PRO. Go on before; I shall enquire you forth:
I muft unto the road, to difembark
Some neceffaries that I needs muft use;

And then I'll presently attend you.

VAL. Will you make hafte?
PRO. I will.-

[Exit VAL,

Even as one heat another heat expels,
Or as one nail by ftrength drives out another,

So the remembrance of my former love
Is by a newer object quite forgotten.

Is it mine eye, or Valentinus' praise,"

7

-the road,] The haven, where ships ride at anchor.

8 Even as one heat another heat expels,

Or as one nail ty Arength drives out another,

So the remembrance of my former love

MALONE.

Is by a newer objet quite forgotten.] Our author seems here

to have remembered The Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet, 1562:

And as out of a planke a nayle a nayle doth drive,

“So novel love out of the minde the ancient love doth rive."

So alfo, in Coriolanus:

"Ome fire drives out one fire; one nayle one nayle."

MALONE.

9 Is it mine eye, or Valentinus' praise.) The old copy reads

Is it mine or Valentine's praife? STEEVENS.

Here Proteus questions with himself, whether it is his own praise, or Valentine's, that makes him fall in love with Valentine's miftress. But not to infift on the abfurdity of falling in love through his own praises, he had not indeed praised her any farther than giving his opinion of her in three words, when his friend afked it of him.

A